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“Long week, no tea scribbling. Time to imbibe and catch up.
There are three reasons for me to shout hooray for this Zelda-inspired tea blend: one, I created it and yet it still...”
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From Adagio Teas

It’s rough out there for a hero. You fight monsters all day long, exhausting your life bar, conquering your pig boss, and running around in (pursuit of) triangles, and yet your sassy love interest is too busy fighting their own battles to give you a little smooch. Buck up, hero. You’ll get that smooch someday, but in the meantime, raise your spirits with this three-force blend of wisdom-blossoming apricot ceylon, power-mongering wild strawberry, and a courageous dose of blood orange. Don’t like it? Well excuuuuse me, tea princess!

The year was 1989. The day was Friday. Every week, like cartoon clockwork, a wee lass rushed home to heed the siren call of The Legend of Zelda, the animated television series. Based on the extra-popular video game — but not by much — the Zelda cartoon was camp-cheese incarnate, and the aforementioned wee lass ate it up with a legendary camp-spoon. Of course, Link’s sarcastically omnipresent TV catchphrase, ‘Well excuuuuuuuuuse me, princess,’ soon entered the campy archives of gaming and cartoon history, and that sort of nonsense rightly deserves a blend from this now-grown-up wee lass, like, yesterday. (Artistic props to KittyPaint from deviantART for drawing the base of Link’s cartoon interpretation used on the label here.)

3 Tasting Notes

There are three reasons for me to shout hooray for this Zelda-inspired tea blend: one, I created it and yet it still makes me laugh, two, it’s based on my own Pop-Culture Childhood Memories (patent pending), and three, it tastes pretty darn good: a full-bodied ceylon with strong notes of apricot, strawberry, and a hint of zesty orange … exactly the flavors which certain video game heroes might pluck off of their video game trees … or rather, the flavors on which good fruit smoothies are based, a description which, while accurate, does not have an appropriately cheesy ring to it.

As a fruit-infused ceylon, this blend benefits from the shorter end of the steeping timer, i.e. about 3 minutes in total. (What are you doing with your ceylon teas these days, Adagio, that makes them so overwhelmingly strong without careful monitoring?) To enhance the fruity flavors here, I recommend a dose or two of sweetener. One can never truly escape one’s own hummingbird-nectared past, it seems, no matter how many black teas one tries!

This would be smashing as an iced tea, so I’m still waiting for summer. I’m also still waiting for the herbal strawberry tea to be back in stock at Adagio so I can use it in this blend instead of the flavored ceylon variety. I crave real strawberries for this one, so excuuuuuuuse me, berry preferences.

And now it’s time for the tea-haiku portion of our little tea show:

No tri in your force?
Have you killed your own fairy?
Restart with fruit tea!

Preparation

Adagio’s ceylons can really overwhelm a blend if not brewed with gloves of kid, as they say. I still wish I could come up with a different blending solution to solve that, but alas, a tea factory I do not have. :)